The Regional Assembly of Text // Update

Recently we reached out to Brandy and Rebecca, founders of Canada’s Regional Assembly of Text and one of the first places that we wrote about in our guide to ask how they are navigating the impacts of the global pandemic. Our conversation hopefully offers some insight into how one creative business is responding to the current situation and how you can continue to support their work and each other in the coming months.

How has the coronavirus impacted your business / space / you? 

We closed both our storefronts in the hope of helping keep our staff, customers and communities healthy. We feel privileged to have been able to make this decision. We thank our staff for their support and we thank all the essential workers in our communities who continue to do their jobs amidst risk and uncertainty.

What are you doing now? 

We are both sticking close to home... having meetings on the interweb, trying not to panic too many times in one day and finding solace in the simple fact that we are all in this together.  

How have you shifted your business / space? 

Because we just launched a brand new website with an online shop featuring our products, we are still shipping orders twice a week from our Vancouver location. 

How can people still engage with you from home? 

We are loving our Instagram community more now than ever and invite people to join us @assemblyoftext. We are posting letter writing prompts for people to do at home with the hashtag #staystationarysendstationery  

How can people best support you? 

By engaging with us on Instagram, by telling their friends about us or by supporting us with online orders.

We love your products. Are there that you'd like to highlight?

We just posted a collection of Stay Stationary, Send Stationery goods on our website... including an Activity Book, Off the Grid Stationery, Missing You Card and more. 

In the coming weeks, we’re going to try to feature more places that are pivoting at the moment to offer support, creativity and wisdom for our stay-at-home lives. Follow along on social media for updates.

Vent Over Tea

When someone tells you their problems, do you try to fix it? We tend to offer alternatives and suggestions when people share their feelings. But sometimes people don't need advice, they just need someone to listen. Just being heard by an empathetic person can help us feel validated and understood.

In Montreal, Canada, Vent Over Tea offers a free, in-person, confidential active listening service to the community. This volunteer driven service aims to promote mental wellness and connection within the comfort of a local café.

I had the opportunity to speak with the amazing folks over at Vent Over Tea to get a more in-depth understanding of this initiative. 

Can you walk us through what to expect when you book a session with Vent Over Tea? 

When you book a vent session through our online platform, you pick a day, time, and cafe to meet at that’s convenient for you. On the day of the vent session, you meet at the cafe, you each buy your own beverages, and then you get to talking! 

When booking the session, you’ll be prompted to list any particular topics you’d like to talk about in the session, but during it you can talk about whatever you’d like. You can make chitchat and ease into whatever topic has been weighing on your mind or dive right into it. Maybe something else has come up since you booked the session that you’d rather discuss. Our active listeners are there to create a space for you to talk about what’s on your mind, so the listener doesn’t have any expectations about what, when, or how things “should” be discussed.

What value can an active listener bring?  

Vent Over Tea’s active listeners bring value by helping to create a space for people to vent, explore feelings, and possibly even discover their own solutions. The idea of Vent Over Tea came about when one of our co-founders, Sarah Fennessy, had worked through her PTSD and no longer needed to see her therapist but realized she still liked having someone to talk to. Around the same time, Sarah learned about a study that found that people with low levels of depression and anxiety saw on average as much improvement in their mental health by speaking with an empathetic listener as they did speaking with a professional therapist. Our service aims to offer our venters empathy and understanding to help with their mental wellbeing. 

What main goal does VOT hope to accomplish? 

Vent Over Tea's main goal is to promote mental wellbeing. It’s a lofty goal for sure! There are three main ways we try to improve the mental wellness of those we interact with:

• There are lots of instances where a person could benefit from talking about their issues, but they don’t need to see a professional psychologist. We understand how helpful it can be to talk through what’s bothering you with an engaged, impartial listener. We want to give people in these situations an outlet to vent to another human being face-to-face. 

• We want to help destigmatize help-seeking for mental health. Whether you just want to vent to one of our active listeners or you have a mental illness and want to see a psychiatrist, through our service, events, blog, and social media, we try to spread the message that it’s okay to talk about how you’re feeling; it’s okay to ask for help. 

• Finally, we want to help create a connection within our community. Montreal is a well-populated city, but it’s common to feel lonely and isolated here—even when you’re pressed up against strangers on the metro. Through our events in particular—but also through our service and digital presence—we try to create space for people to connect with others in a way that makes them feel more rooted in our community. We truly believe that facilitating this sense of belonging will have a positive impact on the mental health of the members of our community. 

If you think you’d benefit from Vent Over Tea’s services and to find out more visit: Website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

Regional Assembly of Text

“A lovely little stationery shop.”

On a trip to Vancouver, I found myself in The Regional Assembly of Text thinking of sending a letter home. Established by the artists and Emily Carr graduates Brandy Fedoruk and Rebecca Ann Dolen to explore “text as a theme”, this is a store/ printing press/ design studio that offers quirky cards, tiny books, papers and printed materials. It also contains the Lowercase Reading Room, a cosy reading library of self-published books and Zines housed in a former storage closet. The Vancouver store has its duplicate in beautiful downtown Victoria, British Colombia, in a second store which has been open since March 2013.

The Regional Assembly of Text is gorgeous, with witty and heartfelt messages in abundance. It just feels good to be in it. But the reason I was really drawn to this space is that once a month they also offer The Letter Writing Club. Since September 2005, out have come the Remingtons and Coronas, with the invitation for people to type, or handwrite, letters to whomever they want, about whatever they want, whether letters to governors or girlfriends. No drafts on Word first, no time to mull over. There’s just the page and a postage stamp, old school style. The Regional Assembly of Text provides supplies, snacks and the space to compose.

As I won’t be here for their next session in a week, I chose a sheet to take away, titled “Heartfelt Letter to Follow”. The last (paper) letter I had written was to a friend when I was in High School. We were separated for the summer and pre-email, so we shared cute teenage girl letters of missing each other even though she lived a short car journey away.

This being Vancouver, I have a rainy day ahead of me, a coffee on the table, and now a pencil in hand, composing a note, but to whom? When faced with the possibility of a blank page and a typewriter, what would you say, and to whom would you write. An apology, a confession, a declaration of affection?

People talk about letter-writing as a lost art form, but perhaps the key part of that sentence is that which is lost. And maybe that’s what letters inevitably connect us back to, and why these sessions at The Regional Assembly of Text are so popular; we get to reach out again to those people, that feel like home, but aren’t where we are at the moment.

As it has rained every day the week that I was in Vancouver, we’ll end with the message on one of their greeting cards:

“Things to do: 

In order to increase your level of accomplishment on a rainy day of your choice: 

Answer the phone using only verbs beginning with M 

Count all the books you own that have one word titles

Choose between elbows and knees

Practice drawing polar bears (mail the best one to your oldest friend, ask for one in return) 

Squint every time you hear the word tomorrow

Feel accomplished.”

To find out more: www.assemblyoftext.com / Instagram @assemblyoftext